Re: VM images and working in the VM image

On 12-May-07, at 5:47 PM, Ted Neward wrote:

>
> With all due respect, Tim, that's a lame answer.

Begging your pardon but I most strongly disagree. 'Lame' would be  
simply saying "dimwit it d0nt w0rk dat way". I pointed to useful  
resources to help Richard understand; resources that would be  
pointless and time wasting simply to repeat. There is a *lot* that is  
different when upgrading from static languages to fully dynamic  
languages with fully dynamic integrated environments. Attempting to  
explain it in a few short phrases is surely foolish, certainly  
misleading and likely to mislead. Oddly enough I know this because I  
used to try it. Fortunately there is little chance of any  
embarrassing record of such doomed attempts on the net because I  
learned my lesson before it (the net) was commonly available.

>
> Case in point: ST's notion of the IDE-in-the-image is pretty lame when
> looking to deploy an image within a "headless" environment. Is  
> there another
> approach when trying to build a server? Surely when running  
> Seaside, for
> example, I don't want or need the overhead of the IDE hanging  
> around.... It
> might be useful in certain scenarios, but most of the time, it's  
> just going
> to be useless overhead....

Again, I disagree. The typical size of a Smalltalk image is so below  
the radar amongst today's bloated OSs and apps that I swear I've  
received word.doc containing emails that exceed a development image  
size. It was a problem in the early/mid 80s when 512Kb was a dream  
for wealthy users. It was an issue in the early 90's when corporate  
users worried about having to upgrade a thousand machines to a whole  
2Mb. It really isn't worth spending much breath on anymore. It  
*might* be a reasonable concern if one were involved in a project  
needing to actually download entire images frequently and the  
bandwidth was worrisome. There is considerable experiential value in  
having a usable debugging environment in a deployed image; much money  
has been saved.

Smalltalk simply isn't a system that gets used in the same way as C/ 
java/VB/whatever. Trying to warp it to use CVS etc and working in a  
write-in-emacs/load-code/compile-code/save-program manner will simply  
ruin the value and make you feel a fool. It is as pointless as  
demanding that Ferarri change to using a Ford cast iron engine, drum  
brakes, soften the suspension to suit American tastes and paint a  
starsky and hutch stripe down the side.

And yes, this is an issue that drives me nuts. You wouldn't believe  
the number of times that we have had someone new to Smalltalk leap up  
and down and explain how we have to change to be just like VB/java/c+ 
+/whatever the flavour of the month is or we're all doomed. I'm still  
making a decent living 25 years later.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [email protected]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
A fool and his money are soon partying



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